William Faulkner's stories touched life's truths

A private man who helped define modern American literature

11:23 PM,
Sep. 24, 2013

William C. Faulkner in 1954.

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A reviewer wrote about Joseph Blotner's 1984 biography of William Faulkner, "What disappointed was not the work ? but the figure he depicted. The great writer seems in life much smaller than his work."

It is a conclusion with which Faulkner, who was devoted to his privacy and prone to obfuscate and deprecate biographical details, would concur.

In a letter to William Cowley, the man who is arguably responsible for much of Faulkner's fame, he wrote: "It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books." ...